Japanese Dialects Masterpost
Dialects can be fun and offer cultural insight. They may be useful to learn, though usually only if you have geographical links to a specific area of Japan- perhaps you have family there, personal heritage there, you live there, or are going to do a language exchange in a specific area. Linguists may also be interested just because they are really interesting.
In almost all instances for non-Japanese people learning to understand a dialect when it’s spoken/written (rather than produce it in your own speech) would suffice for communication. As far as I can see the best reason to learn to actually speak a dialect is because you want to communicate with elderly people from that region specifically; most young people have had far more media exposure so they can easily use ‘standard Japanese’/ Tokyo dialect.
If a non-native Japanese speaker learns a dialect and can’t speak standard Japanese, they may find they are seriously limited in conversations and people will inevitably find it weird. They might just find they are incomprehensible:
’I spent three years living in Nemuro, the easternmost town in Hokkaido. […] Hokkaido-ben is often misunderstood outside Hokkaido, Nemuro-ben can’t be understood even in the next town over. So it’s basically useless unless you’re planning a trip to Nemuro (which I would recommend.) However, it does show how many variations there are in dialect, even within one island.’ [Tofugu, my emphasis]
Someone with a low communicative ability in English who could only speak using Cockney rhyming slang, but didn’t know standard English unfortunately would sound ridiculous to natives of that area. It would seem crazy to know 'You’re 'aving a bubble mate!’, but not ’You must be joking!’. They’d sound odd and in many instances their language would sound antiquated. Be aware that you may well get a similar reaction if you pepper your speech with regional dialect as a non-Japanese person without being conversationally fluent in standard Japanese. I’m not saying don’t learn dialects, please do if they interest you, learning to understand them when you hear them, rather than necessarily use them in your own speech, is a great idea. If you want to speak in them, please try to do it all in good time and in a respectful way that is not accessorizing the language and culture.
For beginners:
Many of the resources here will be only in Japanese, as this post is aimed at higher intermediate and advanced learners. The section below is in mostly English and will give you a general overview if you’re interested:
For intermediate and Advanced learners:
I’ve organised this by prefecture, but it’s worth noting that some prefectures contain several dialects and I’m by no means an expert, I hope the Tumblr Japanese learning community can contribute to and help improve this post.
General:
Wikipedia has a lot of basic introductory information on dialects, there are almost certainly dialects I’ve missed from this list, if you search for the prefecture or geographical location and the word 弁 or 方言 then you’re likely to find a dialect, even if it isn’t simply called [place name]弁.
There are books on dialects, typically designed for native speakers, such as this dialect dictionary, or this Tosa ben guide available in Japan, but you’d need some very advanced Japanese to be able to access them, in which case I doubt you’d be following my blog.
Beyond regional dialects there are also many languages that are native to Japan that are not Japanese. If you’re interested in learning Ainu, one of the Ryukyuan languages, Japanese sign language, or another language from Japan that is not standard spoken Japanese then this Tofugu article may interest you. Many of these languages are endangered.
Thanks to these bloggers who helped contribute to this post:
@suzustarlight @tomatograffiti @grapefruitcake
Disclaimer: There are a massive number of regional dialects in Japan, I am neither Japanese, nor an expert, so inevitably I will miss some off this list. If you want to share information about a dialect from a part of Japan you’ve visited or lived in please reblog and add some information or resources, so that we can get this post to a point where it’s as comprehensive as possible. Many thanks!
